Do you ever use "expendable henchmen"?

[Asmor]

I would recommend against this for a couple reasons...

First and foremost, no matter how cool you might think it is, that doesn't necessarily make it engaging for your players. Telling players what happens is just... telling a story, not playing a game. If it's not something they're interacting with, it's a waste of breath.

That said, there's a couple problems with the approach that I see...

Think about the poor schmo that's gettin' the ax (maybe literally). In order for the event to really have any weight with the players, the NPC getting killed has to be pretty important for them. But if he is... well, congratulations, you just wasted a great NPC for some special effects. That's the D&D equivalent of blowing a couple million on an animatronic T-Rex whose only purpose is to pop up in one scene and show the audience how cool the movie is.

On the other hand, if the players don't have much of an attachment, then it's no big deal. "Damn, we lost another hireling... Guess we better pick up another six-pack when we get back to the guild house."

 

[Warren Okuma]

Yup. Red Shirts, red shoes, red cloaks, red sashes, red eyebrows, red troubleshooters, red ninjas, red coats, red capped torch bearers, yup.

 

[Balgus]

I've had a couple NPCs guide the group up to the mouth of a cave and then be devoured by a barghest. It swallowed them whole (which just happened to take as many rounds needed for teh aprty to prepare buffs)

 

[FalcWP]

I've never done this, or even considered it, but now that its been mentioned, I can certainly see some value in it, and will keep it in mind. Certainly not something to use often, but throwing something like that in every now and then could certainly be effective. Just something to hint at danger up ahead, long before the rogue starts making Search checks...

 

[Zurai]

One of the local DMs (also the owner of the FLGS) once had a whole herd of expendable henchbeings

They were playing Tomb of Horrors, and decided that it was cheaper to buy an entire flock of sheep and drive them into the tomb than it would be to disarm even a couple traps by magical means. Not to mention you could use the ones that got roasted as food later on!

 

[pawsplay]

My players pretty much roll their eyes when they ask the names of their dwarven escort, and I rattle off the names of a few Greek playrights or early English kings. It's not that i kill all NPCs, it's just that I am not at all reluctant to kill any given one. Every so often, a "red shirt" survives, levels, and develops something of a personality.

 

[Scurvy_Platypus]

See, I'm the complete opposite of Asmor.

I use "cut scenes" in my games, where the players wind up getting snippets of something. Purely metagame. It serves a number of different purposes, and showing off some nasty critter or trap is one of them.

I'm not quite sure why everyone is so focused on whether or not the PCs have some sort of attachment to the henchmen, but then again I was never inclined as a player to get them in the first place. Since every DM I ever had liked to kill them in various nasty ways.

If casually butchering henchmen is a problem for some reason, why not just have some sort of created item that is the equivalent to the Crash Test Dummy?

A pretty simple thing that's a cross between an Unseen Servant (able to follow very basic and simply commands) , and one of those cat figurines that changes into a real critter. It would be about as easy to "destroy" as a person, and can be easily fixed/repaired. You could have one for each racial type, which is basically an average version of whatever race's height and weight.

It shouldn't be able to do anything particularly "sophisticated" in terms of the actions it can perform. Basically it's a walking suit of armor that can be eaten (or constricted, or whatever special funky thing some critter does), or walked into a trap.

If you're so inclined, you could even give it some sort of primitive awareness, kinda like the Luggage from the Terry Pratchet novels. Players could "receive the distinct impression that the Trap Dummy is a bit surprised at the viciousness of this particular trap." or some other sort of expository hijinks you feel like getting up to.

I mean, c'mon... given all the other stuff that adventurers are finding, killing, looting, and whatnot, it's hard to believe that nobody thought of/created something like the Trap Dummy.

Sure, it's probably a goofy idea to a lot of people. I still think it's got some charm though.

 

[Warren Okuma]

One of the local DMs (also the owner of the FLGS) once had a whole herd of expendable henchbeings

They were playing Tomb of Horrors, and decided that it was cheaper to buy an entire flock of sheep and drive them into the tomb than it would be to disarm even a couple traps by magical means. Not to mention you could use the ones that got roasted as food later on!

Now that's an idea. Sheep. I award you a cool point.

 

[Aeric]

Not henchmen per se, but I definitely have no compunctions about whacking NPCs to prove a point.

In the first campaign I ever ran, all of the characters were in the same military unit. At one point, there was an opening in the unit for two more soldiers, so I decided to fill that opening with two NPCs from one of the PC's backgrounds. I had everyone so convinced that they were going to be a permanent addition to the campaign that when they died rather quickly and ignominously at the end of the same session in which they were introduced, it came as quite a shock to the players.

 

[Aeric]

One of the local DMs (also the owner of the FLGS) once had a whole herd of expendable henchbeings

They were playing Tomb of Horrors, and decided that it was cheaper to buy an entire flock of sheep and drive them into the tomb than it would be to disarm even a couple traps by magical means. Not to mention you could use the ones that got roasted as food later on!

We did something similar in RttToEE, only with us it was the celestial monkey. Once it became clear that there were save-or-die traps in the dungeon, we would use Summon Monster to call a celestial monkey to go through suspicious doorways or handle cursed items. One such monkey was called specifically to take an evil magic item back to Celestia and hand it off to the nearest archon for disposal. We never did learn if that was successful. I always hoped to run into an evil awakened celestial monkey wielding that same magic item later on in the campaign, but it never happened.